


Time ain’t gonna cure you, honey

by doomed_spectacles



Series: If I could love like anybody else [7]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: 1960s Music, Aziraphale is Sir Not Appearing in this Fic, Character Study, Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley is the patron saint of alcohol as a way of dealing with problems, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, No Plot, No Sex, POV Original Character, POV Outsider, Pining, Quote: You go too fast for me Crowley (Good Omens), Sorry just yearning, again really this is just yearning, canon-typical alcohol use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:41:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23536219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doomed_spectacles/pseuds/doomed_spectacles
Summary: In 1960s London, the owner of the Rusty Ghost pub gets herself a cranky guardian angel. Things change when he's around, but usually for the better. He rants about time and love and loneliness. She listens patiently, until one day he brings a thermos into the bar with a haunted look on his face.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: If I could love like anybody else [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1504748
Comments: 16
Kudos: 139





	Time ain’t gonna cure you, honey

**Author's Note:**

> Ah yes, hello. This is an outsider POV with original characters, so if that's not your thing, no worries if you nope out right here.
> 
> So, yeah. This is Crowley becoming a regular in a bar in the 1960s, from the point of view of a woman who has her own shit to deal with thank you very much. Can be read as a prequel of sorts to [The virtuous among us](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21504685), but all fics in this series can be read independently.
> 
> This doesn't end happy, but the show does!

_ Time ain't gonna cure you, honey  
Time don't give a shit _

_ -The Kills _

[1967]

Deandra poured a fat finger’s worth of Talisker and slid it across the bar, expecting him to catch it. He did. Raised a dark eyebrow but otherwise didn’t react. His face was stony, lit by the weird shadows of the back of the bar where he always lurked. She knew exactly why he chose that spot, and why she tried to keep it open for him. The red-haired man in the dark Lennon shades watched the door with the ease of someone who’d been looking over his shoulder for so long he wouldn’t know how not to.

He raised the glass to her and downed it. Slid it back over.

Nancy Sinatra crooned in the background, lamenting love and freedom and innocence lost. Anderson waved her over for another cheap shot and she lost herself in his sorrows. His mousy brown hair was disheveled, his suit a wreck. The solicitor bemoaned the loss of his wife while skirting around the account of the grocer’s son he’d been caught snogging in the back of their family car. Deandra leaned forward on the bar in her listening pose while he wailed, nodding and cooing enough to calm him down but not enough to get involved. She’d pour two more and call a black for him.

In the far back of the pub where shadows outnumbered the sconce lights, a couple of blokes were getting rough with one of her servers. She was a new girl and easily half Deandra’s age. She looked around for Mark, but the hired heavy was nowhere to be seen. Deandra sighed. She pursed her lips and reached under the bar for the wooden bat she kept handy, watching the hand creeping up the girl’s thigh.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the red-haired man do something with his hand, then one of the men in the back dropped his drink into the other’s lap. Both men threw drunken punches that landed nowhere near their marks and the girl fled. She grabbed the nearest one’s wallet as she left. Good girl.

Deandra slid another finger of whisky to the redhead. He nodded and downed it.

“My regular guardian angel, you are,” she said. She took his glass back. She kept a mental tally of everyone at the bar’s number, but his was a blank. She’d given Marvin two beers, Anderson one shot of tequila, and two vodka sodas to the housekeeper who stopped by the Rusty Ghost every Thursday for two vodka sodas. But her red-haired angel could’ve had two or twenty for all she knew.

She frowned. He frowned right back.

“You can call me anything you like, bar person, but not that.” She couldn’t see his eyes so she couldn’t tell if he was serious. He sounded amused and angry and sad all at once.

“Oh come on,” she said, “you’re my good luck charm, doll. Whenever you’re here, things go right.”

He pursed his lips.

“Fights get called off. Good tips for the girls. No coppers checking girdles. My ginger friend, I’ll keep you around so long as your luck keeps rubbing off.”

He snorted, then pointed at his empty glass. She gave him a smile and another. Mark called her over, some new gals came in, then Anderson started crying again. The next time she turned around to his side of the bar, the stony-faced angel with the red hair was gone.

\---

“Bar people! Next round has arrived!” Anthony made his way round the bar, slinging his hips and winking at bewildered regulars. He tried to flip his seat around to sit astride it but realized too late it was bolted down.

“Someone’s in a good mood,” Deandra said, and took the wad of cash he’d plopped down. She mixed him an old-fashioned, not sure why since he hadn’t actually ordered. When she handed it over, he’d somehow managed to flip the chair around and straddle it anyway. Deandra frowned, but resolved to worry about the chair later. And take it out of his tab if he’d broken it.

“No clue what you’re on about,” he said, but grinned underneath his sunglasses. She’d stopped asking him to take them off a while ago. “Go on, round for everybody. Marvin, another beer? Consuela needs a vodka soda, it’s Thursday after all. And Anderson, what’ll we have?”

The miserable solicitor didn’t look up. He held his head in his hands and mumbled something unintelligible.

“Tequila it is!” He slapped the bar. Deandra never figured Anthony’d be obnoxious when he was happy, but she’d learned not to trust her own judgement when it came to the mysterious man in sunglasses. “Who’d he get caught with this time?” he asked, jerking a thumb towards Anderson, who looked like he was trying to disappear into the wooden surface that held him up.

“His accountant,” Marvin said from the other side of the bar. Anthony nodded.

“Well, Anderson you poor old sod, tequila will fix you right up!” he shouted.

Deandra poured a very short tequila shot, barely giving him enough to swallow. As Anderson started moaning about his accountant, Cecilia walked in. She was perfectly coiffed as always, dressed to kill and completely aware of it. Deandra stumbled over nothing on the floor, and poured her a perfect Manhattan.

“He’s been down to Soho,” Cecilia said, leaning in close and batting her lashes towards the redheaded man. She took a cherry into her painted mouth and everything slowed down for a minute.

“What? Really?”

“Not  _ that _ ,” she said, and tossed a coy look over her shoulder. The kind of look that broke hearts and opened wallets. “Not  _ that  _ part of Soho.” Cecilia pulled out a cigarette case. It was pink leather and lined with leopard print. Deandra held out a light and held her breath while Cecilia’s perfect red lips closed around a cigarette. She inhaled, then blew the smoke out the corner of her mouth. 

“Your Anthony’s got a bookseller down there. Real posh place, sells antiques and the like.”

“What’s a posh bookseller got to do with-” Deandra jerked her head towards Anthony, who’d made his way to the jukebox. He flipped through the records and concentrated while his lower lip jutted out and his hips moved in time with the music.

Cecilia let out a trill of laughter. She loved a good gossip. “I know his barber.”

“Anthony’s?”

“No! The bookseller. He’s a gentleman-type. Loves his cologne and little cigars. Anyway, your Anthony’s been round to see him a few times lately. Way I hear it, they drink the night away, then he comes out whistling in the morning and drives off in that ridiculous car.” Cecilia looked very pleased with herself. She sipped her drink and tried to look demure. Her blond waves shone in the dim light of the pub, and Deandra’s dingy bar was instantly transformed into something classy. Something out of the movies. Deandra could pretend it was, anyway, when Cecilia came in.

“Bar person! Your music is terrible,” Anthony shouted from the corner.

“You know my name!” she shouted back. Cecilia smiled, and Deandra’s heart did something funny in her chest.

_ I’ve Been Loving you Too Long _ came on, though Deandra was sure it didn’t have that record. She didn’t give a damn.

\---

“It’s just time. So much sodding time, you know? You know, bar human. I know you know,” he said, and actually swayed a little. 

His voice did a weird thing sometimes, but only after she couldn’t account for how many he’d had. It’s like his words got stuck somewhere between his brain and his mouth but sound kept coming out. The sound being a screeching syllable of half-processed thought, by way of the Queen’s English.

“I know, Anthony,” she said. Deandra didn’t know, but he talked about time a lot and she didn’t argue. How old was he? Mid-forties, maybe. But when he got like this, something about him screamed  _ age _ . She’d known an old sailor till he drank himself to sleep at ninety-three, ranting about the Kaiser as if he’d known him personally all the way to the bottom of his last bottle. Anthony had a whiff of that in him, sometimes.

He waved his hands in the air and then looked at her as if he’d communicated perfectly via hand motions. “It’s just that it’s  _ every damn time _ , you know. I can take it, and I think I can take it. ‘S long as there’s enough time in between. But it moves faster now?  _ You all _ move so much faster now.”

Marvin nodded sagely along, agreeing. Anthony jabbed a thumb towards him and wagged his eyebrows. “Time,” Marvin said.

“Time,” Anthony agreed. They clashed glasses together, both spilling dark liquid onto the bar.

“Anthony,” she said. He focused on her, head swaying a little. He should’ve looked like a drunk, swaying like that, but instead she saw a snake. “Anthony, you  _ can’t  _ take it. Every time. You come in here after, every single time.”

He shook his head, and Marvin copied him.

“Just need time,” he said. “I’m fine, ‘s long as there’s time. And time’s all I got.”

He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, but she couldn’t see them. They were bright but indistinct. Blurred somehow. She filed the thought away later, to try and remember what it was about his eyes. He replaced his glasses and stared down into his drink. She couldn’t remember pouring him one.

“Time ain’t gonna cure you, honey,” she said, trying to blunt the edge in her voice. There was only so much heartache she could take on a given Thursday. “I’ve seen you come in here high on him, then you crash. Every time. Lemme tell you something - _ time don’t give a shit _ . What you got? For him? It’s permanent.”

“Permanent,” Marvin agreed. He nodded at both of them but couldn’t focus, eyes crossing.

“Some loves don’t quit, babe. Even if you want ‘em to.” This time she consciously poured him a glass and resolved to cut him off after it. Anthony stared at her and she could see his eyes through the glass but they were distorted somehow. They looked sad and yellow, but that couldn’t be right. She expected him to blink eventually, but he didn’t.

“Gotta go,” Marvin said, lifting his heavy frame onto unsteady legs. “London Ringway ain’t gonna ring itself.” He chuckled to himself and flug a few notes on the bar. Marvin nodded towards Anthony and patted the stack to tell her he was covered.

Anthony stared hard at his back. There were several things churning underneath the surface of that look, and Deandra didn’t want to know what any of them meant.

\---

Anthony sat in his usual seat and gestured vaguely. She brought him three fingers of Ballantine’s and braced her arms on the bar, angling away from him. He tried hard to maintain a veneer of his usual cool, but tonight he looked manic. More than a little wild, though his velvet suit was pressed and the bright red curls framing his face were perfect as always. He kept clenching and unclenching his jaw. He downed the scotch in one gulp and without realizing she was doing it, poured him another.

He set a thermos very carefully on the bar.

“Anthony, you know I’d let you get away with murder, but I will not allow whatever  _ that  _ is in my place,” she said, nodding to the sign behind her head.  _ No outside drink _ .

“It’s not. It’s … water,” he said. He laughed, sortof. Or barked. “Just water.”

Her eyebrows hit the ceiling. “You expect me to believe that?” The thermos was a boxy plastic thing with a ridiculous tartan pattern. He stared at it as if expecting it to burst into flames.

“With every fibre of your being.” His voice wasn’t quite sarcastic enough.

A moment passed. It was a slow night, but even slow nights were loud. Murmured voices and broken hearts and spilled drinks. Anthony cradled a full tumbler in his hands, though she wasn’t sure when she’d poured him a third glass.

“What is it, really?” she finally asked. He breathed out carefully. “You look like you’ve seen the Virgin herself in that cap.”

“It’s proof.”

“Proof? You said it was water-”

“Proof that I’m not alone. Proof that there exists, on this earth, a person that gives a damn.” He tipped back in his chair. He went white, all of a sudden, the blood drained from his face.

She took a deep breath. Whatever this thing was, it meant something to him. It made no sense to her, but it didn’t have to. A thermos of water on the bar. People had brought stranger things into this place and treated them like Anthony treated this thermos. Like they were holy.

"Him?"

He nodded.

“You know,” she said carefully, “most people, when they get that kind of proof - they don’t run straight to the nearest bar.” 

It was the first time she’d had to  _ handle  _ Anthony. She knew he was dangerous. Had heard he was setting something up from the barman at the Dirty Donkey. She didn’t know his business and she didn’t want to, but Anthony J. Crowley had plenty of cards in his sleeve and even though he’d never shown anything but weariness and love-drunk frustration to her, she’d promised never to let her guard down. Not here, in this place that she owned and loved. Not even for Anthony.

He looked at her, finally, and seemed to belatedly realize they’d been having a conversation. Then he grinned. His mouth stretched wide, showing crooked teeth and shoving his sunglasses up on his nose. It was not a nice grin. It was the grin of a man on his way to the noose, determined to crack jokes on the way to hide his shaking hands.

“Don’t ever mistake me for most people,” he said. He snatched the thermos and left. 

Deandra stared after him. At the end of the night, she came up several thousand over in the till with no accounting for it. She locked up and sat down with a glass of sherry. When the buzz started in and the edge of the night dulled, she wiped her glass and turned off the lights. In Anthony’s spot at the bar, a bottle of 50 year Macallan appeared. She took it home and never saw her guardian angel again.

**Author's Note:**

> -The London Ringways were roadway projects planned to circle around London before the M-25.  
> -[I've been loving you too long](https://open.spotify.com/track/4pdLyulbYLCrPmDzWWeJIZ) is such an excellent song, by Otis Redding.  
> -This fic, the title, and several lines were inspired by [this song by The Kills](https://open.spotify.com/track/5lLFVI6A5ut1COrCpsRV1D). I'm not into songfics usually, but this line in Deandra's mouth just had to come out. Sorry not sorry?  
> -Lots of fics have Aziraphale as being protective towards LGBT youth, and I liked the idea of Crowley doing some version of that as well. In his own alcoholic-soaked way.
> 
> [this is me on Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/doomed-spectacles)


End file.
